We woke up briiiiight and early this morning! Not intentionally, the rain here can be really loud! Sat out on the rocking chair staring at the clouds where there is supposedly a huge volcano. Found a little armadillo that didn’t seem to mind the weather. As the rain continued on and off, we got increasingly more concerned about our plans to go hike up the volcano. We went to breakfast and pondered whether or not the clouds would burn off like the forecast had said. We waited around for awhile and considered doing other activities like canyoning, but the rain seemed to put a damper on any idea we came up with. I took advantage of our wait time to go walk around the hotel property and take some pictures of the flowers! Please just let me bombard you with pointless flower pictures from that walk just to make me feel like I didn't waste my time :)
Back in the room, I found a little friend! Who really seemed to take a liking to Nick... and unknowingly fulfilled Nick’s lifelong dream when he decided to give him a little visit! :)
Finally we decided we would just make today an exploring/shopping day (shopping... Nick’s idea, not mine... but really.) We got in the car and headed off to find the lake. It took me awhile to realize that there really isn’t anywhere to go on the lake. Why would you NOT have a little town on the lake?... so we drove about halfway around and went to Toad Hall (basically the only thing around). Their marketing manager did their job well, they had so many signs along the side of the road, some of them were just plain ridiculous. We took a little walk around their property and their shop and headed back home.
A really cool ORANGE river we found on our drive around the lake! We were using our shirts to compare the color of the water
During the drive home, it got sunny out and we were kicking ourselves a little bit for not feeling like we took advantage of the morning. So on a whim, we decided we were going to go canyoning. Nick claimed to have seen the office for the company we were looking for, the previous day, so we went off in hunt of the office in hopes of catching their last tour of the day (which was about 30min away). Nick’s memory wasn’t right, but a funny thing happened. (a little background first: the entire trip Nick kept mentioning that we could go wakeboarding while we were in Arenal, that he was facebook friends with a guy that owned a wakeboarding company here. Nick had no idea how they became friends.... but we were seriously considering finding this guy and going wakeboarding)... So as we passed by the building that Nick thought was the Desafio Canyoning tour office, he looks at the guy sitting on the front porch and goes “I think that is Jonathan...” Jonathan as in the the guy that Nick has no idea if he actually knows him or not. To make this already long story a bit shorter, we decided to stop and introduce (or reintroduce) ourselves to Jonathan and his wife. Really awesome people. We spent a good amount of time just hanging out and talking with them. He told us that Desafio (the company we were looking for) was the big bad corporation that everyone in Costa Rica hated, and told us about better local tour companies. We took Jonathan’s advice and went ahead and booked a rafting tour for tomorrow.... and then threw on a combo tour for the second part of today.... 7min before the tour started to be exact.
With little time to spare, we headed just down the street to go on our zip-lining, hiking, rappelling, Maleku tribe learning, horseback riding tour. We got to do 11 ziplines, the longest of which was 980 meters (approximately 60kph), 4 of those were in complete pouring rain.... raindrops pelting your face and eyes at that speed is about as ridiculous, entertaining and painful as it sounds. Being the last tour of the day and with only one other girl on the tour with us, our guides were pretty relaxed and joked around alot with us. They were alot of fun. The highlight of the tour was without a doubt, the rappel. Only one rappel, but that one 80meter rappel (which looks reaalllly high in person) was right down the side of a huge waterfall. The start of the rappel was right when the rainstorm came in, so add that to the mist of the falls and it made for a pretty dramatic event. Feeding our own rope, we were in control of how fast we wanted to come down (don’t worry, there was a backup belayer at the bottom just in case). To coincide with the rappel, my only complaint about the trip (please mind my snobbiness on this topic) was the photographer. He didn’t seem to care much at all about photography, and he bailed altogether when the rain came in, so much of our adventure wasn’t photographed, and the parts that were, were not that great. It still makes me sad to think about because during the rappel, our photographer stayed at the top and shot looking down on us... so there is no evidence of the amazing waterfall.... or any real perspective to show you just how high we were, and how teeny tiny we looked in comparison to the valley we rappelled down into. But photography rant done, the experience was incredible! We heard a little presentation from the Maleku tribe, and learned a little bit about what the masks and animals mean. We looked around at their art and then headed back. I will still hold that the most terrifying part of the whole trip was riding the horse down at the end. My horse was very territorial. He didn’t like anyone being in front of him. Especially Nick’s horse. I was perfectly content going very slowly, but every now and then the guide would make my horse go faster.... for anyone that understands this, just think of the movie It Takes Two, the horse riding scene, that about sums up how I felt when we would go faster. If that reference means nothing to you, don’t worry, it’s not important.
Right before the rappel and the downpour!
Nick going down! You can't see it very well, but the little yellow dots in the mud down below are people.
Zip-lining in the rain!
When we got back, we went to the little restaurant on site and got a free meal that was part of our package. Shout out to Nick, he went a good 4-5hours without a meal! (positive reinforcement ;)
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